Religion as an instrument

The column by Leonard Pitts Jr. (“What if God were looking back at us?” June 18, 2018) is highly revealing of the bankruptcy of the religious morality of Donald Trump in particular and his conservative Christian supporters in general.

Pitts references the horrific administration policy of separating the children of undocumented immigrants from their parents, including one particularly repulsive episode where a nursing infant girl was pulled away from her mother. These in-your-face, Bible-babble claimants of the moral high ground, whose actions confirm their belief that human rights begin at conception and end at birth, have the gall to declare themselves Christians. Pitts rightly refers to their behavior as “moral putrefaction” and “evil,” that most odious of Biblical sins.

I’m no fan of religion since it’s clear that God is made in man’s image and not the other way around, but I do respect many religious people, including Leonard Pitts Jr., who practice the Ten Commandments and don’t use their religion as a blunt instrument of manipulation and self-serving political expediency. The shameful and disgusting lack of empathy, kindness and basic human decency by these self-appointed prophets of religious morality is mind-boggling. Thank God I’m an atheist.

Tim Beamer

Cheney